Choose a Landing Site

The Educator Guide has a script, materials list, and prep directions. Be sure to have it open and ready to help guide you through every activity. 

• Revisit the PLANETS Science Series Educator Guide if it's been a week or more since you completed a Science Series activity. 
• For this activity you will need Science Notebooks for each youth plus Data Packets, Landforms Glossary, Landing Ellipses, and Mineral Data Sheets for each group. 

• How can we choose a landing site that will meet our criteria? 
• How can we share what we found out? 

• Integrate their understanding of prior data sets to select where to land on Mars. 
• Justify their reasoning about landing site selection and communicate their explanation to others. 

The Curiosity Rover sings itself "Happy Birthday" every year on August 5th. The rest of the year, Curiosity is programmed to collect and send scientific data back to Earth. 

• Youth can present and share in a variety of ways. Here are some options: a list of ranked landing sites, an annotated image or drawing, or an oral or written argument. 
• Emphasize how scientists must use multiple sources of evidence when making claims. 

Data: information that is collected through scientific investigation 

Evidence: information or data that supports an idea, claim, or belief